Lake Mary Girls Wrestle With Numbers

VARSITY

Teams With Small Rosters Struggled To Keep Up In The Oviedo Tournament.

January 21, 2004|By Emily Badger, Sentinel Staff Writer

OVIEDO -- You should know this disclaimer if you're going to look at the total team score: There are only two of them.

At least that was the case Tuesday night at Oviedo High School, where Gudny Sigurdsson and Jessica Schwendeman made up the entire Lake Mary contingent at a nine-team girls wrestling tournament.

"We'd get like two points," Schwendeman joked before the meet. "But it's kind of discouraging."

Lake Mary -- like most of the teams present -- has a hard time convincing girls that participation in this sport doesn't require testosterone. And as a result at tournaments like these, the bracket is full of byes and the stands have plenty of room to spare.

Finding 14 girls, on a graduating weight scale, who want to pull on a singlet and, well, act like rough-housing boys can be a tough sell.

"It's not for girlie girls," said Sigurdsson, who finished sixth in the state last year as a heavyweight. The "state tournament," in this case, is an unsanctioned meet.

"It's the last sport considered taboo for girls to do," said Schwendeman, a 145-pound junior.

Lake Mary had as many as 10 girls at one point, but few stuck around when it came time to lift weights and pair up on the mat. Coach John Harris now counts four girls on his roster, although only two competed Tuesday.

Sigurdsson, a blonde with perfectly applied eyeliner, was once the only member of the team.

The senior spent most of last season wrestling with the Lake Mary boys' JV team -- "I got pinned a lot," she admits -- before she recruited Schwendeman to join her.

Now they train in the same room as the boys (Harris also is a boys assistant coach), an arrangement that suits Sigurdsson fine.

"If I don't keep my eye on her, she'd be down there with the boys trying to beat somebody up," Harris said of his captain.

With the small roster -- and the size difference between Sigurdsson and Schwendeman -- finding ways for the girls to train is tricky. They devote most of practice to conditioning and technique sessions and then spend only 30 minutes live on the mat. Sigurdsson often wrestles Harris, and Schwendeman is left to look on.

Marge Carver, the head coach of host Oviedo, has invited Lake Mary, along with every other school in Seminole County, to train with her team. It's an invitation that might not be found among competing boys teams. But even Carver's established program doesn't have a complete roster.

Osceola, which had 10 girls competing, won the tournament with 202 points. And that final score for Lake Mary? It was 38.

It was good enough for seventh place, thanks largely to Sigurdsson's heavyweight championship.